Still working. I’m there four nights out of seven, which leaves precious little time to catch up on GLEE. Yet somehow I manage.

The kids are growing like things that grow a lot — what are they called? — weeds. Molly is almost three months old and delightful. She laughs now, but only for Iain. For me she gives coy smiles from across the room, as she waits cheerfully in her baby swing while I scramble to make the kids some lunch or help Owen navigate brickset.com (building instructions for every Lego playset, ever). Owen, as mentioned, is elbow deep in Lego mania, building things like two-story jails with sliding doors, subway stations with disco balls, mobile police command units with coffeemakers. Cormac, in turn, builds elaborate Playmobil pirate setups on the radiator. Literally, he climbs on top of the radiator, which is covered with a ’50s-era steel case, and hunkers down in the warmest spot in the house. He lives on raisins, oxygen, and imaginary rum, as does his pirate coterie.

Iain is enjoying a brief respite from masters-degree coursework. He spends his free seconds building wood furniture, like a showoff. The man appears to be unruffleable.

I bought insulated curtains for the living room. Funny enough, it’s still about 12 degrees in here. We put up a Christmas tree bigger than a jumbo jet, which sheds mountains of needles that stick in our socks. It’s beautiful and undecorated aside from an envelope clipped to a branch with a clothespin. As you can see, we are ready for Christmas.

Life is good. It’s just incredibly, unfathomably … full. Packed to the gills. Not sure where the days go, but they sure do zip by.

So there was much new-mom wringing of hands, and weeping at tiny lead aprons, and wondering what I did wrong, that my chubby six-month old looked so skinny at two years old.

Fast forward two years, and the same pediatrician was calmly telling me that Cormac was about to fall off the growth charts. He was in the fifth percentile for weight and height. He was (and is) a slender, slim little bugger. But before she could say “pediatric endocrinologist,” we had moved from Baltimore to Pennsylvania.

During his first checkup in our new town, I fearfully broached the subject of his “inadequate” growth. Will he need shots? What are we going to do? The doctor looked me up and down. “What are you, about five-three? five-four? Looks like he got your genes. HE’S FINE.”

Fast forward three years, and Molly is getting her two-month well-child checkup. She weighs twelve pounds, two ounces, and she is 24 and a half inches long — meaning she’s put on about two pounds and two inches in two months. She’s in the 95th percentile for height and weight.

95TH percentile. Granted, she’s only two months old, but it just feels weird to have a baby on the other end of the scale. Mac, I could just drop into my kangaroo sling and barely notice he was there. Molly, well, lifting her is like lifting an adorable, floppy bowling ball. She’s reassuringly, refreshingly fat. And she still might slim down alarmingly around age two, but at least I’ll know to expect it.

Genetics is funny, isn’t it? The same two people, the same diet, the same pregnancies, can lead to such different results. Kinda makes you think that we don’t have as much control over this stuff as we thought.

And they’re fine, too, the kids, which is so hard to remember when you get caught up in the numbers. Healthy. Growing the way their DNA wants them to. For example, Owen finally got his growth spurt, at age five. His father’s genetic contribution is now evident, as his legs practically doubled in length overnight. He totters around on his stilt-like stems much like a giraffe, albeit one with an unrelenting Lego obsession. He’s still shorter than his best friend, and probably a lot of other kids in his class (sorry, tyke) but there’s no doubt whose child he is. All leg and no torso, whereas I think Mac will end up like me — all torso and no legs. Again, sorry, tyke.

Anyway, Molly is two months old, growing into her own person. She seems very mellow and sweet to me. Except when she’s trying to fall asleep, when she screams and flails one arm like she’s trying to start an invisible lawn mower that’s on fire. She sleeps in her own crib, swaddled within an inch of her life in a Miracle Blanket, which could very well lead me to a religious conversion. She still has dark blue eyes and dark hair and perfectly smooth cheeks and adorable Spock ears. I love her little face. She smiles and coos now and chews her hands and seems to enjoy the toys dangling in front of her on her bouncy seat. I have to physically restrain the boys from kissing her forehead 100 million times an hour.

And today we’re bringing her, and her skinny, protective older brothers, to Ohio for Thanksgiving, for a little fattening up, seeing as I have the long weekend off from work*. I hope you all have a terrific Thanksgiving, unless you are Canadian, in which case I missed the ball on that benediction, sorry.

*Going back to work has been a complete non-issue. She’s still sleeping at night, I haven’t fallen face-first into my keyboard yet, and we’ll still be able to make that dratted minivan payment. Victory is mine!

I have been having false labor pains since Tuesday. I came home from work that night convinced that I’d be holding my baby by Friday. Ha! Good one! Oldest trick in the fetal playbook, don’t you know. Contractions and dilation mean nothing. You shouldn’t believe you are in labor until the nurses are pestering you to sign the birth certificate.

I decided to check my archives to see how it all went down the last time I went into labor on my own: five years ago, with Owen. Well. He was born Jan 5. On Dec 23, I was 2 cm dilated. On Jan 3, my contractions were 20 minutes apart. So basically, I was in labor for two weeks. Which means that, as my due date is not until Sept 14, I should abandon hope of going early with this one, dammit. No matter how ready I am.

So we bought a minivan last week. Ay! It’s two years old, a trade-in from the Jaguar/Volvo/Land Rover dealership, which makes me laugh because that is the first and last time I will ever have cause to be on the grounds of a freaking Jaguar dealership. When we test-drove it it hadn’t even been detailed yet, and when I tell you this vehicle was owned by a multiple-child family, trust me, I’ve seen the evidence. (And my future. And my future is covered in mysterious brown stains.)

It’s a used Sienna, it’s silver, it will seat all of my children and their car seats and their friends. And the diaper bag. And the groceries. And when I go to the thrift store I know I’ll be able to haul my finds home. (That could be a good thing or a bad thing.) But it is weird to walk out to a parking lot and cast around for a little sedan and realize the vehicle you’re looking for has SOCCER MOM stamped all over it. It does require a small change in one’s self-regard.

I’m about 45 minutes away from selling the Cav. Cross your fingers for me. I’m selling it to a former law enforcement bigwig who will then fix it up and give it to his niece for college. It will be a far better end than Ruth, my ‘88 K-car wagon, got, which was to explode in a heap of smoke in Lot 6 on the campus of BGSU.

The new van doesn’t have a name yet, so I’m taking suggestions! You all did such a gnice job gnaming my gnome (“Gnathan”), I thought I’d give you another shot.

Luckily for me, when he wasn’t yelling he slept very sweetly.

And I mean sweetly.

As he grew, his hair did too. I miss those baby curls.

Though maybe I let it get a little out of control.

When we cut it, I admit I did cry. But as different as he looked to me at the time, this is Mackie as we know him and love him now.

So grown up, but still all Boy.

Some of you may be acquainted with Mackie. If so, you know he definitely has Opinions. Many of them have to do with being photographed. I don’t let it stop me.

Anyway, he’s cute when he’s mad.

Over the last year he’s grown so much. His vocabulary is endlessly amazing; his costume changes purely inspired; and his view on the world makes my day brighter (though sometimes louder).

He loves Batman, pirates, legos, cars, and trains. He adores his big brother. He longs piningly for baby birds and the neighbor’s cat, Charlie — Mackie begs me for a pet twice a week — though consistently turns down Iain’s offer of a pet snake (good boy!). He likes to make up stories. He potty trained himself seemingly overnight a few months ago, and I have to say, it makes me laugh to bump into him in the bathroom in the middle of the night, both of us squinty eyed in the light and hopping on one foot.

He is as slender as ever, just like the day he was born, and his blue eyes regularly arrest old ladies at the supermarket. He is by turns charming and devilish, like a good little Gemini. One minute he’s curled on your lap stroking your hair, and the next he’s got a sword, an eyepatch and a license to kill.

He’s one-of-a-kind and I’m so glad he’s mine.

Happy Three to you, Cormac Louis Macaroon Looney Roon Toon Tooney. I love you. More than you can guess. More than you will ever know.

Actually, no, not breaking news. I think I broke this on Facebook. Or you could say it broke when I told my mother and my neighbor.

BUT life wouldn’t be right if I didn’t make a big fancy deal on my Actual Blog: We’re having a GIRL!

A GIRL.

WE ARE HAVING A GIRL. CAPSLOCK.

You may have noticed that I only have boy children. I have a house full of Legos and trains and cars and trucks; bins full of jeans with holes in the knees, walls reverberating with BAM BAM BAM PEW PEW YOU’RE DEAD! I have been informed not only of the The Pink, but of Disney Princesses, and lo, I am scared.

But frankly, I’m majorly psyched, too. Hair to braid! Dresses to sew! A new nursery to decorate (though I think it’s staying blue, which only suits because Owen started his life with us in a pink bedroom). Maybe she’ll be the quiet booky kind, and we can quietly read books together. Or I’ll teach her to knit, since my boys won’t hold still long enough. Or she’ll hate knitting, too, but look so cute in overalls and a ballcap when her dad teaches her how to fish.

Twenty-five years from now, I’ll have a shopping partner, someone to call me on the phone over coffee at 10 a.m. I’ll be her someone to vent to when she’s 20 weeks pregnant and feeling as big as a house.

Honestly? I thought this one was a boy. I had visions of My Three Sons, of my troop of blue-eyed guys, wrestling and mowing the lawn and disappearing in a blur of dust and mud, like Pig Pen with six legs. Three brothers, like my cousins; three brothers, like my dad with my two uncles. I was mentally prepared for three to a room, bunk beds, being outnumbered.

Now I have to readjust that vision. Well, maybe I don’t have to; I suppose I need to see what kind of person she is before I start assigning her dollies and Mary Janes and dance recitals. She just might be into dirt and mud and tagging along with her brothers. Or maybe she’ll be into both dirt and dollies, and it’ll be my job just to be the open arms (with the washcloth in the back pocket) at the end of the day when all three of my kids troop home.

Hi, boys and girls, it’s me, Supa! I’m emerging from my huddle on the couch to say, I’m pregnant again! Couldn’t be more excited about a new baby. Kind of already over the pregnant thing, but I’ll put that down to the eternal, ever-present queasiness. Illustrated: I walked in the door last week and immediately retched, simply because my dear husband had fried chicken a few hours earlier. Made him feel like a great cook. I am so over this already.

Yeah so, that’s where I have been: hiding with my eyes closed, trying to sleep my way out of the nausea, but it isn’t working.

I am exhausted and of course I already can’t sleep through the night to save my life. Last night I woke at 1 a.m. to find Owen in my bed; I made him get out and visit the bathroom and was about to put him back in his own bed when he confessed that the reason he was in my bed in the first place is because his was covered in chunks of vomit. Surprise, Mom! You can imagine what a good time I had cleaning that one up.

If it’s not a fragrant pile of barf, it’s my own indigestion, or my bladder, or my husband’s snoring, or Cormac making some pretty surreal middle-of-the-night inquiries. I am resigned already to setting aside “sleep” as I once knew it until Short Round hits his or her first birthday (September 2011, not that I’m counting).

Things that make me want to barf:

• smells
• remembering smells
• thinking about something I once smelled
• imagining I can smell something
• smelling, basically.
• Smell smell smell.

I can’t even enter my kitchen without my hand over my nose. Neither can I identify the source of whatever it is in there that’s punching me in the upchuck center. (Admittedly, it could be my colorful imagination).  All I crave is soup from Panera, with maybe a few hard candies for dessert. I indulged my craving for gummy bears earlier in the week and my insides revolted. Lesson learned.

Anyway, I know it’s kind of early to share this news, but I have a good feeling about little Short Round, and the only way I’ll be able to emerge from my huddled, gut-wrenching coccoon is if I am permitted to complain about it vigorously for about, oh, seven and a half more months.

(Bam! Told you I had updates!)

We had a super Christmas, you guys. Visited my family in Ohio, wore mustaches, ate a lot of delicious food and played a lot of games. We got a Wii for Christmas, so when we came home after the holiday, we set it up in the living room and have been playing Lego Star Wars ever since. No seriously. We wake up, we have breakfast, and then we take turns beating up Storm Troopers for hours. We have totally hunkered down; the blinds are all drawn, the house is a mess, you can’t see the floor for Legos — but man, was this ever a vacation. The four of us together, doing stuff; no Twitter or work or chores chipping away at our family time.

It all ends today, of course; tomorrow it’s back to the daily grind for each of us, and vegetables and laundry and school and work, but for this last week? Slackerly, slovenly heaven.

We moved in to our new house the week of Halloween 2008, which means we’ve now been here a whole year. We’ve seen all four seasons and every major holiday, memorized the quickest routes to school and work and grocery store, met a bunch of super people and started our own traditions.

It makes me a little verklempt to think of my kids growing up in this house; to picture my sons as teenagers and the inevitable scars and scrapes this house will endure under their huge feet. I always knew the Baltimore house was not a forever house, and I’m pretty sure this one is. Oh, the plans I have for this house and this family.

Here’re the boys on October 30 last year:

Ach! Cormac was still a baby. He had just learned to walk when we came to Pittsburgh last summer and now these days he is doing C3PO impressions.

Owen has matured even more, from a very grown-up Three to a positively adult Four. He still explains things to us with one hand on his hip and the other gesticulating in the air, like a three-foot-tall university professor. Which reminds me I need to show you his corduroy blazer with the elbow patches. Seriously. You can imagine how well it suits him.

We’ve lucked into wonderful neighbors (whose children play with our children and who hand down corduroy blazers that suit them perfectly) and even the trash barge on the river at the end of our street has a certain beauty at dusk.

I’m still self-conscious about the exterior of our house, to be sure. It still needs to be re-sided, storm-proofed, extended, re-landscaped and generally improved. But in the last year we’ve filled it with books and pillows and music and plants and toy pirates and shortbread, so at least we have everything we need.

Ah well. It’s not my place to put other people’s faces on the Internet, anyway. That’s what Facebook is for.

The hotel:

The reception:

My exhausted little ringbearer:

See?

I also want to thank everyone who piped up with advice for me on what to wear. I can’t even tell you how helpful you all were.

I ended up with Shoes A (the pointy pumps) and pearl earrings, on direction of the brid (as a good matron of honor I bowed to her will). I think it looked nice, but I don’t have any head-to-toe pictures to show you, sorry. Just picture a groundhog in fancy dress. You will be relieved to hear that I didn’t fall down once in those heels. I’m not sure how I managed that.

The ceremony was beautiful and we all (the girls, anyway) sobbed our way through it, sentimental saps that we are. The reception was at The Venue at Smith Bros — an urban-loft looking banquet hall with a gorgeous view of downtown Columbus, all fairy lights and roses and rain. I can’t even tell you how pretty it was. And of course I can’t show you because I don’t have pictures.

But it was lovely. And the band they hired (MoJoFlo) was killer. Seriously, I was worried someone was going to have a heart attack dancing to it. I’m not naming names. There was a lot of funky-soul R+B plus some really excellent originals, too. Seeing them play out would make for a good date, if you live around there. The dance floor was packed most of the time and NEVER empty (thanks to my brother). Owen hopped straight out of his chair to dance with the flower girl when they started playing. (And those two? A fleeting four-year-old romance bloomed and faded in the span of about an hour and a half. I think they’re going to remain friends, though.)

Both kids lasted well into the night and then fell asleep at our corner table, watched over by my friends and relatives, who thereby enabled Iain and I to dance to the last song of the evening: a cover of Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” And when I say “dance,” I mean “hang on to each other while our feet move and Iain sings to me.” We like (fine, *I* like) to dance to one song together at weddings, and that “dance” usually involves more than the usual amount of swaying.

The next morning we gathered at my brother’s house for bagels and coffee and, unbeknownst to me, there was a birthday cake upon which was written HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARY BETH but which kindly left out the 30TH and which now, the remaining 17 servings of which anyway, is sitting in the box in my fridge.

The weekend ended on a literal sour note, as we drove home in the dark and had to pull over rather abruptly so Owen could be sick on the berm and then as we started up again Mac was sick all down his front and into every available car seat crevice. So that bit wasn’t so great.

But the rest of the weekend was a blast and I’m so happy for my sister.